


Intro to Archaeology

by readyplayertwo



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Archaeology, College, Lance names his fridge Blue, M/M, sorry not sorry at all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 00:43:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11909661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readyplayertwo/pseuds/readyplayertwo
Summary: On Sunday night at ten-thirty, Lance McClain figured he should probably finish his reading for archaeology. There was one problem with that, though: he’d lost his book.-Wherein Lance gets competitive about extra credit rankings and borrows a copy of his book from his RA. The only problem? Someone's written bizarre notes in weird chicken-scratch handwriting. What's even weirder is that they're actually helpful.





	1. #44

On Sunday night at ten-thirty, Lance McClain figured he should probably finish his reading for archaeology. There was one problem with that, though: he’d lost his book. Somewhere between Saturday’s impromptu dance party in his dorm (which got shut down by their RA, Shiro, after an only hour) and Friday night’s shenanigans (he was too drunk to recall what they were, beyond a vivid mental image of vomiting on a pair of shiny shoes), his book seemed to have grown legs and walked away. 

“Crap,” he said. “Crap, crap, crap. Hunk, have you seen my book?”

His roommate was hunched over his desk, squinting at something on the computer. “What?”

“My book! My archaeology book! You know – the big yellow one with the block letters?”

“Lance, you lose everything.”

“Stop re-pinning microwave cake recipes and pay attention to me! This is a disaster. Oh my god, I’m going to die.”

Hunk looked over and rolled his eyes. “You’re fine. Besides, what’s the big deal? You don’t even care about archaeology.”

Lance folded his arms over his chest. In truth, archaeology wasn’t his favorite subject – or anywhere near it. It was just that their professor put up these clicker questions and gave everyone thirty seconds to log an answer. He said whoever had the most right answers by the end of the semester could get out of the final.

Of course, Lance’s answers weren’t always wrong…but they were most of the time. It wouldn’t have pissed him off so much if it weren’t for the fact that there was some jerk who’d registered his clicker under the name RED, and he was at the top of the scoreboard every single time.

“Y’know, Hunk, I’m just trying to appreciate the value of my education. The best this fine institution has to offer!” He flung his hands wide. One hand knocked into an open Sprite on their dresser, and as it wobbled, Lance reached out to catch it.

“I would’ve killed you in your sleep,” Hunk said, not even looking up from his computer.

“Hah – as if.” Lance flopped dramatically on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Wait! Do you think Shiro has an extra book? He had this class a couple years ago, right?”

“So you’re going to wake up our RA at, like, eleven PM on a Sunday so you can borrow a book he might not have?”

“See – flawless planning. I’m doing it.” He grabbed his jacket and rolled off the bed again. “Back in a minute.” Closing his door as quietly as he could, he tiptoed down the hallway towards Shiro’s room and knocked.

There was a rustling, and then what sounded like voices, and then the door opened. Shiro stood in front of him, a little bleary-eyed, in a black T-shirt and fleece pants. “Lance?” he muttered. “What’s wrong?”

“Hey, so…can I borrow your book?”

Shiro was beginning to wake up more, and it seemed to have dawned on him that Lance had just woken him up to borrow something. “My book?”

“Yeah. You, um, you took archaeology with Michaels, right?”

“Right.”

“Do you still have the book? I kind of…I think I lost mine? And I have class tomorrow?”

“Lance, you should’ve done your homework already,” Shiro said, but he backed away from the door and knelt down in front of one of his bookshelves. Lance watched as his RA ran his fingers along the spines until he found it. “This one, right?” He hefted a large, yellow book in one hand.

“That’s it.” Lance grabbed the book.

“Don’t stay up too late.” Shiro folded his arms over his chest. “You have to be responsible, you know. That’s what college is about.”

“Shiro, I feel like you’re seriously misinterpreting the point of college. Me, though – I got it down.” He was about to say something about free-flowing booze and fake IDs, but remembering the trouble he’d gotten in the other night, he shut up quickly.

Sighing, Shiro said: “Goodnight, Lance.” He closed the door, and Lance waited until he heard the sound of the lock sliding into place to go back to his own dorm. 

The lights were dim, and Hunk had his earbuds in. He’d started to gravitate towards his own bed, but he’d only made it halfway there, so he was sprawled out on the floor now, still scrolling.

“I’m going to the library,” Lance announced, grabbing his backpack. “I’ll be back. I think.” He yanked on the door to his little blue mini-fridge, but like always, it was stuck. “Come on, Blue,” he said. “I believe in you.” 

“I can’t believe you named your refrigerator.” Hunk had one earbud dangling free now, and he was watching with amusement as Lance battled with the fridge.

“Look, Hunk, you have to respect a machine this beautiful and cultured.” He smacked Blue on the side, and there was a disturbing rattling from within. This was the same mini-fridge his older sister had taken to college four years ago, and it was safe to say she’d practically wrecked the thing. Only Lance had figured out the right way to finagle the door open, but when he was too tired, it gave even him trouble. He slapped the side again, closer to the hinges, and the door opened slightly. “See?” Pulling the door open the rest of the way, he grabbed two cans of energy drinks and shoved them into his backpack.

“Jesus, Lance, how do you drink so many of those?”

“Well, not all of us throw up every time we smell Red Bull.”

“You know that’s only because it reminds me of that time we mixed vodka Red Bulls.”

“Look, Hunk, buddy – no need to explain yourself to me!” Lance grabbed a third can and cracked it open. The smell must’ve been stronger than he thought, because Hunk immediately looked a little green around the gills. “See you tomorrow!”

“Sure thing.”


	2. #39

Lance was halfway through his energy drink by the time he found an open study room. The irritating thing about the school library was that people were always there before him. You couldn’t just go into the first study room you saw – you had to walk around a while. Lance considered it a kind of Walk of Shame, peeking into every room you passed by like some kind of sad voyeur.

People could reserve rooms in the library, sure, but that required planning and actual thought, and Lance wasn’t big on planning, so he’d never managed to reserve a room for himself. He just sat in one until he got kicked out. Or he bluffed his way through it and claimed he’d reserved it (but only if he was feeling lazy). There was one time when a cute girl tried to kick him out, so he said she could stay with him if she wanted.

That didn’t work that well. She just frowned at him, and then her boyfriend sauntered up behind her, and Lance took that as his cue to scram.

Today, though, he managed to find an empty room without any incident. He sat down at the desk and opened up his computer. According to the website, the reading was pages 122-149.

Lance opened the book and stared at it for a moment. It was covered in annotations and highlights in all kinds of different colors. Jesus, who’d murdered this textbook? Did Shiro already know how fucked-up it was, or was he going to blame Lance for coloring on everything?

Closing his eyes, Lance tried to get himself to focus. He took a deep breath and looked at the book again. He was halfway through his notes before he saw the first one of the notes.

B C A

It was in neater writing than the rest of the notes, so he stared at it for a second. Weird. The rest of the handwriting in the book looked like the psychotic pigeon-scratch of a conspiracy theorist. In fact, Lance thought, squinting at one of the margin notes, which appeared to be a theory about Ötzi the Iceman’s untimely demise.

When he’d managed his other two energy drinks, Lance tapped out the last of his notes and closed the book. It was almost one now, and it probably was later than it ought to have been. He had a thing about getting distracted, though, and so reading had been interspersed with weird Wikipedia rabbit holes.

Flipping to the front of the book, he checked to see if this was really Shiro’s book. As he’d thought, Shiro’s name was cleanly printed in the front cover. But if this was Shiro’s book, then what the hell was the other stuff?

Whatever. He pushed up and away from the table and was headed towards the door when he heard it open. The light in the study room flickered on from the sudden movement, and then the silhouette in the doorway was properly lit.

It was a boy, a little shorter than Lance, in a black sweatshirt. He had dark circles under his eyes, and –

“Is that a mullet?” Lance sputtered, partly from shock and partly because the energy drinks had drained him of whatever self-control he had.

Mullet fixed Lance with a murderous glare, and Lance got the hint fast. 

“Okay, wow, guess you have bad hair and no sense of humor.” Lance tightened his grip on his backpack straps and pushed past the boy. 

The door slammed behind him, and he walked as fast as he could without breaking into a run. He couldn’t help but think that Mullet was still glaring at his receding figure through the study room’s window.

-

In Archaeology that morning, Lance was chugging yet another Red Bull (Hunk claimed his blood was probably fifty percent energy drinks at this point) when he heard the first multiple choice question coming. He’d actually done the reading, and for once in his life, he felt prepared.

The first question was B, he was sure of it. He smashed the button on his clicker and leaned back to evaluate his classmates. Most people got it right. At the top of the list, RED still hadn’t gotten a single one wrong. Lance was ranked 44th, much to his aggravation.

C was the second question, and though it was a bit harder, Lance was still confident in his answer. He was considering the possibility that doing the assigned reading might actually be worth it when the third question came up.

There was a collective groan from the class. This one was nigh-on impossible, mostly because it was their professor’s personal opinion. At the beginning of the semester, they’d been assigned to read his book, and he had given an opinion on every archaeological dig they’d be studying. His book was tragically un-sourceable on the internet, too, since it wasn’t actually published yet, so Lance’s usual “Google and Panic” strategy was out of the question.

B C A

That pattern in the book. He wasn’t sure now if he’d imagined it in some feverish caffeine-induced dream, but it didn’t seem like a bad idea. The first two questions had been B and C. Why not try it?

He keyed in A and waited. Around him, people were staring at their clickers with blank, horrified expressions. This was the kind of question that had the power to knock the rankings around.

The professor stopped accepting answers and clicked to the next slide, a breakdown of answers.

“The correct answer was A!” he announced. He looked back at the pie chart behind him. “According to this, most of you thought the answer was B! Only two people got the answer, so congratulations to you – you’re doing a good job reading. You should strive to be more like them, everyone!” The professor squinted at the data. He’d insisted everyone use their real names as names for the clickers early on in the semester, but as a class, they’d collectively decided to ignore him. Lance was ofthelake, mostly because he figured Arthurian legend was cool and kind of made sense. “ofthelake and RED, keep up the good work!” He showed the rankings again, and this time, Lance had moved up to #39.

“Yes,” he muttered. And that’s when it hit him.

B C A

Everyone filed out of the room, but Lance kept sitting there. The right answers to the multiple choice questions had already been in the book. The book he hadn’t returned to Shiro yet.

He pulled it out of his backpack and thumbed through to the pages for last week’s readings. They’d had some hard questions, and he remembered it distinctly because all three multiple choice questions had been E, which irritated the hell out of him.

Yep, there it was. Page 110: E E E.

There was no indication that these were the answers, but what else could they be? He flipped through even more of the book and saw that every chapter contained a similar sequence.

“Piece of cake,” he said. Archaeology was about to get very, very easy; Lance was sure of it.


End file.
